When I published the first edition of my Historical Reliability of the Gospels in 1987, I included a paragraph that was cautiously optimistic about the Shroud of Turin as the possible burial cloth of Jesus. The very next year, the results of three independent laboratory tests from different parts of the world were released, agreeing that the cloth could not be dated to earlier than the 1200s or thereabouts. I knew that if the book ever went to a second edition that paragraph would have to be replaced.
Last fall, twenty years later, that revised edition appeared, and I disavowed that the Shroud could offer any support for the veracity of the New Testament accounts of the resurrection, at least as scholarship currently stood. I did note, though, that scientists have yet to come anywhere close to a plausible theory about how the image (akin to a photographic negative, accurate in all its detail to everything we know about Roman crucifixion, and complete with genuine blood stains) came to appear on this cloth.
It is only ironically fitting that in the very year after that edition of my book, the question should be opened up again. Last Tuesday, the Denver Post published the story of the work of University of Colorado (Colorado Springs) physics professor, John Jackson, who argues that carbon monoxide contamination could easily skew the results of the carbon-dating of the cloth by up to 1300 years. Whether the Catholic Church will allow further testing now or at any future time is, of course, very uncertain. The story mentions that the last public viewing of the Shroud under its protective casing was in 2000, with the next scheduled showing not until 2010.
What is at stake here? The case for the resurrection scarcely depends on the Turin Shroud (or any other ancient artifact) being proven to be the burial cloth of Jesus. But if a reasonable case could some day be made for such a conclusion, it would be dramatic corroboration of the biblical accounts of the crucifixion, complete with the nail marks in wrists and ankles (not palms and feet as typical in medieval artwork) and a puncture wound in the side the size and shape of an average Roman sword thrust.
If, even more dramatically, some theory about how the image was created on the shroud could be proven, consistent with the biblical accounts of an instantaneous resurrection--Christ bursting through his wrappings and facecloths (which could well have left an image something akin to what is on the shroud), then it would not be an exaggeration to speak of the findings as the greatest empirical corroboration of the Christian faith ever. After all, according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, Christianity lives or dies with the veracity of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
But not even Jackson is predicting such drama any time soon. My own hunch is, because God has always left so much wiggle room for those to doubt even his existence, not to mention the biblical stories, that he will never permit some artifact to demonstrate the truth of his Word beyond reasonable doubt. As Paul puts it, "We live by faith and not by sight." And Hebrews refers to faith as "the assurance of things hoped for and the convictions of things not seen." Or in the words of Spanish philosopher and poet, Miguel de Unamuno, from the 1890s, "Faith that does not doubt is not faith." But suggestive evidence God has granted us aplenty, and perhaps some day the Shroud of Turin will fall into this category. It will be interesting to see what I write twenty years from now, if both my book and I last that long,
Not a good year for carbon monoxide. It's getting blamed for everything!
All of us are secretly waiting for that piece of proof, that letter, that artifact, that jerusalem find that will - once and for all - proof Jesus rose from the dead.
But as you said, we live by faith.
I'll keep my eye on the development of any new carbon dating on the Shroud of Turin.
What Professor Blomberg says here is definitely a breakthrough. I hope to see the scientific research by Dr. Jackson.
George Farahat
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